Externally funded projects

Digital platforms, such as Facebook, Google, Twitter/X, threaten the integrity of democratic processes by spreading mis-and disinformation at the same time as decimating funding for quality journalism. Our team of researchers across three Swedish universities together with international experts plans on studying potential solutions to these threats.  We investigate (i) strategic interactions between platforms and governments, (ii) effects of platforms on politicians, and (iii) approaches to help finance the creation of journalistic content. The research addresses important gaps in the scientific literature and aims to inform debates about the regulation of platforms and the remuneration of news publishers.

Access to quality news coverage is important for individual and collective decision making. If citizens are poorly informed or misinformed, democratic processes may be undermined, as current debates about fake news and the dissemination of conspiracy theories illustrate. Previous evidence suggests that market forces have a strong influence on the quality of news coverage, but evidence of causal effects of competition between media companies on their news quality is very scarce. We address this research gap in three ways: First, we construct a large-scale, content-based measure of the quality of Swedish newspaper coverage between 2014 and 2022; second, we investigate how news quality is related to different forms of market structure and market overlaps between newspaper companies; and third, we compile causal evidence of the effects of newspaper consolidation on news quality in Sweden. Overall, we aim to answer the question of what the optimal level of competition for high news quality is. The project is therefore highly relevant for competition authorities and media regulators, but our findings will also be of interest to other stakeholders, including readers, politicians, and media companies.

Digital platforms have created challenges for societies, due to their great market power and opaque activities. Policy makers may tackle these challenges via regulation or collaboration, but it remains unclear when one or the other approach is preferrable. We address this research gap in two ways: First, we derive a theoretical framework to analyze the pros and cons of regulatory vs. collaborative governance related to digital platforms. Second, using data from Airbnb in Denmark, Norway, and Sweden, we evaluate effects of both policies on a) commercial and occasional renting and b) tax compliance. The project intends to derive guidelines about policy choices related to digital platforms. 

The recent emergence of radical and populist forces in many Western countries illustrates how powerful information disseminated by news media can be, especially when the information is biased or fake news. The economic literature on media bias has substantially grown over the past decade, but empirical studies on the effects of media competition on media bias are scarce and provide mixed results. This research gap is worrisome, as the optimal degree of competition for news markets to provide a diversity of opinions remains ambiguous in practice. This proposal addresses this gap by investigating the Swedish newspaper market. Specially, we (1) construct an index of ideological slant, (2) investigate which motives of media owners drive the slant, and (3) estimate the causal effect of competition on slant. On the one hand, the project will contribute to the economic literature on media bias and media regulation. On the other hand, it will provide recommendations that are relevant to policy makers and competition authorities – in particular, to inform the debate on press subsidies and offer a more nuanced view on media concentration.

Over the past decade, economists have been working increasingly on media bias; its forms, its causes, and its consequences, particularly in the ambit of news markets. Political slant is considered the most prominent form of media bias, but the literature also addresses biases related to advertising, newsworthiness, accessibility, and negativity. The origins of such biases can be found in the supply and demand side of the news market. Examples for supply-driven bias relate to the influence of lobbies, interest groups, advertisers, newsmakers, or technological conditions. Demand-driven bias is usually caused by the preferences and beliefs of the audience, which media companies cater to in order to maximize profits. The literature has also been investigating the consequences of media bias, such as effects on welfare, voting behavior, and political decision makers. In the light of this, the goals of the network have been established as follows. First, it aims to address three gaps in the research area: (a) measuring political bias in multi-party systems; (b) evaluating media bias across countries; and (c) developing new strategies for the empirical identification of cause and effect. Addressing these gaps is of high practical relevance, considering the pivotal role of mass media for democratic processes. Second, the network aims to support and integrate young researchers by connecting them with more experienced economists, both within Germany and internationally.

Funding to develop the “Data and Business Analytics” specialization in the MBA program at Hamburg Media School, consisting of four new courses “Web and Social Media Data”, “Relational Databases”, “Text mining”, and “Machine Learning”